Your products and services – or solutions – meet very important needs of your customers. The more your solutions directly impact their ability to do their business more effectively, the more powerful and important your partnership becomes.  Salespeople can hitch their solutions to the most important wagons with a little focus on the right needs.

No matter who you are positioned with in an account, an understanding of the top company goals is useful in the short term and often critical in the long term.  In the short term,  simply offering a solution they are asking for may be enough to make a sale at a department level.  In the long term, much like what we have seen in the past couple of years, spending gets scrutized for one reason or another and any spending not directly tied to the most important goals gets cancelled.  Also, salespeople often find themselves in the position of being sold internally by an ally or coach.  They have to provide the information and incentive to get their internal ally to fight for their solutions.  If that person is armed with the connection to the top goals, the more likely they are to be successful in their interal sales role. 

So, we know it’s important, now, how do you do it.  Here are some things that you may want to try:

• First of all, start high in an organization.  The more effectively you can tie your solutions to their unique company goals, the more likely you are to stay high.  Even if you get delegated lower during the process, you still have access higher.
• Research, research, research.  Find out everything you can about what the CEO is focused on accomplishing.
• Find out what role your contacts play in the top company goals. For example, pretend your contact is in HR and one of the company’s top goals is the successful launch of a new product for 8% revenue growth this year.  How will HR help the company reach this goal?  Is it their job to find new sales people?  Is it their job to train everyone on the new product?  What particular part will they play in this goal?  Once you know this you can help them reach their goal which helps the company reach it’s goal.
• Demonstrate how you can help them reach these goals more efficiently.  Show how the investment with you gives them the gains they need.
• Once you are in, monitor your contribution and share it in regular reports and communications.  Check in often on progress and make sure you stay aligned should the goals get altered.
• Learn to ask questions that get you to the most important goals.  You’ll be surprised that often your current contacts actually don’t even know the company’s top goals.  You need to learn to ask questions that don’t make them feel stupid yet also help you work toward gathering the necessary information.  Simply asking someone “what are your company’s top 3 goals?” may sound like a pop quiz.  Use your communication skills to have productive conversations where you both learn if necessary.

Solutions tied to top goals stand the test of time and scrutiny.  Get hitched to the right goals for long-term, mutually beneficial relationships. 

Meeting to Win provides weekly sales team meeting agendas for Sales Managers.  This week’s agenda is Tie Your Solutions to Their Goals.  If you would like to lead your team through exercises designed to help them “get hitched”, subscribe today.